New evokable: jar of reversal

[Lasty]

I've really enjoyed the expansion of evokable items of late, and I believe I have mumra to thank for that. I'd like to propose a new evokable as well:

Jar of Reversal
When evoked, you are prompted with a message, "really try to open the jar?" If you confirm, you have a Evo/27 chance to destroy the jar and gain a status that ends the next time you are dealt damage or after 50 aut. If it ends on damage, instead of losing life equal to that damage, you gain life equal to that damage.

The jar is extremely rare (avg: 1 or fewer per 3 rune game) and weighs 20 aut.

I believe that this would add an interestingly different defensive effect to the Evocations skill. The effect is fairly powerful, but isn't reliable until you hit very high Evo, so it specifically boosts high-Evo characters, and it's one-shot, so it can't be abused.

[duvessa]

I think you overestimate how good this would be...there already exists a level 8 spell (in two good schools, at that) that does basically the same thing except it works for unlimited damage and lasts several times longer and you can use it as many times as you want.

Even if Death's Door didn't exist, if it only works on one hit, it's not going to be useful for much besides 1) desperately waiting for a teleport or 2) hitting yourself with LCS to heal. There are very few enemies that consistently do non-crappy damage; even if you are fighting nothing but an ancient lich the jar will probably only give you one or two extra turns and it took an action to use it so you're only looking at around 15 aut on average. Worse if the lich is hasted, and even worse if for some reason you're not.

[reaver]

There is also the problem of DD using it and dancing in front of some OOD monster to gain as much health as possible.

Anyway, if you want to get new evokables in the game I would focus on getting the mumra evokables merged rather than trying to create new ones. They're already coded (although it might need some rebasing) and by extension of being coded by him have mumra's approval.

[njvack]

even if you are fighting nothing but an ancient lich the jar will probably only give you one or two extra turns

Unless I'm misunderstanding, it should give you, on average, one more turn.

[pratamawirya]

How about this?

Jar of Magic Reversal

When evoked, it gives you a special "Absorb" status. The status lets you absorb any incoming magical attacks so that they deal zero damage (possibly also converting them into MP). The jar has it's maximum capacity, though; it can only absorb at most Evo*7 magical damage (we can tweak this number, of course). If you get hit by a spell stronger than the jar could handle, the jar will absorb some of the damage and you suffer the rest of it. When the jar has absorbed enough damage, it will close itself and the status ends. The downside is you cannot cast spells while you're under this status (kind of like silence), though you can close the jar any time to cancel the status. Once closed, you can only open the jar again by gaining enough XP (the same with phial of floods, etc).

[duvessa]

even if you are fighting nothing but an ancient lich the jar will probably only give you one or two extra turns

Unless I'm misunderstanding, it should give you, on average, one more turn.

Again, I was assuming the player is intelligent enough to use haste. I see that this was too generous for Tavern.

[njvack]

Again, I was assuming the player is intelligent enough to use haste. I see that this was too generous for Tavern.

If I'm a turn away from being murdered by a lich, it's reasonable to assume that yes, I've made other mistakes.

[MDvedh]

Use jar, LCS yourself, profit.

[Lasty]

If I'm overestimating how good it would be, it would be simple enough to tweak it until it becomes good: allow more uses per item, increase the amount of healing, extend the buff duration and/or number of triggers, have the damage get reversed before defenses are applied, etc. In some sense the question is, is there room for a defensive/healing evokable item other than wand of HW, but which is only useful for characters with a large investment in Evo?

I think the case of use jar -> LCS yourself -> profit is a fine trick to allow, since it takes high investment in at least 2 skills and at least two turns to execute.

[galehar]

If I'm overestimating how good it would be, it would be simple enough to tweak it until it becomes good

Indeed, it's annoying how people always comment first on the balance of proposed features. First design it, then balance it. Anyway, from a design point of view, I don't see much potential with this item. Healing is tricky to balance, and as duvessa pointed out, player damage is more reliable than monster.

I think the case of use jar -> LCS yourself -> profit is a fine trick to allow, since it takes high investment in at least 2 skills and at least two turns to execute.

It's not a fine trick if it's the primary way of using the item. And it doesn't really require investment in a second skill if you have any form of ranged damage you can turn against yourself and you're already trained for (which most character should have).

[njvack]

Wait, was that "why do people immediately jump to the balance of a proposed feature" immediately followed by "this sounds like it would be really hard to balance"?

[galehar]

Well, "it sounds like it would be really hard to balance" isn't the same thing as "it's overpowered" or "it's underpowered".

[njvack]

The idea of a rare consumable that provides a temporary form of extreme damage reduction might be interesting, though. Maybe something like (numbers pulled directly from my colon):

* When successfully activated, you get a status that reduces damage taken by X% (50%?). It lasts for Y (30-50?) turns. The item absorbs the damage and stores it.
* Item evocation (successful or not) causes fireball-levels of noise.
* When the status wears off, the item explodes Z (0-2?) turns later, delivering W% of the absorbed damage (30%?) to the adjacent squares, including the player. This will never directly kill the player, leaving the player with at least DDoor-level HP. It will directly kill monsters. Delivered damage can be resisted only by DD damage shaving.
* If the player self-damages by any means or attempts to drop or re-evoke the item while the status is effective, the item explodes immediately. There is, of course, a warning.

Success rate and perhaps X, Y, and W would be affected by evocations skill.

It may make sense to flavor the item as necromantic and make it incompatible with death's door. Maybe this is death's window

[BlackSheep]

It seems simpler to have an evocable that either provides a damage shaving effect or blocks a flat amount of damage before expiring, then requires xp to recharge like the new elemental items.

[1010011010]

I like the idea of the jar slowly getting full.
I like the idea that a full jar being used as a grenade even better.

[ontoclasm]

:)

The idea of a rare consumable that provides a temporary form of extreme damage reduction might be interesting, though. Maybe something like (numbers pulled directly from my colon):

* When successfully activated, you get a status that reduces damage taken by X% (50%?). It lasts for Y (30-50?) turns. The item absorbs the damage and stores it.
* Item evocation (successful or not) causes fireball-levels of noise.
* When the status wears off, the item explodes Z (0-2?) turns later, delivering W% of the absorbed damage (30%?) to the adjacent squares, including the player. This will never directly kill the player, leaving the player with at least DDoor-level HP. It will directly kill monsters. Delivered damage can be resisted only by DD damage shaving.
* If the player self-damages by any means or attempts to drop or re-evoke the item while the status is effective, the item explodes immediately. There is, of course, a warning.

Success rate and perhaps X, Y, and W would be affected by evocations skill.

It may make sense to flavor the item as necromantic and make it incompatible with death's door. Maybe this is death's window

This sounds really complicated. Why not just a potion of death's door?

[njvack]

Potions that replicate spells are kind of boring? It seems a little dull that a spell, wand, and potion give the identical haste effect, too.

I think that in practice, usage wouldn't be so complex. You do a thing, take less damage for a bit, and then deal some damage to yourself and others. But maybe it's too odd for its limited use.

[Lasty]

In this context, evokables are more interesting than potions. A potion of death's door would be very good for every player that could use it (e.g. not undead, not worshiping a good god), and losing one would be a sufficient loss that whenever one shattered in your inventory you'd be inclined to write a complaint about it on this forum. The existence of such an item would be a significant power boost to players.

Making it instead an evokable allows the effect to be gated by investment in Evocations, and a number of behavioral tweaks: is it one-shot, limited use, rechargable, etc? Does the effect depend in some way on Evocations, either in terms of ability to activate or in the effect obtained by activating it? Does activating it take a single turn, or longer?

[caleb]

My first thought when reading the title was 'evokable abjuration', maybe a better direction to take the object?

[duvessa]

Potions that replicate spells are kind of boring?

Replicating a spell and then making a bunch of convoluted changes to it for no reason is considerably worse.

[njvack]

Just because you don't see the reason for changes (or think they are stupid) doesn't mean the reasons do not exist. How is the disc of storms not just conjure ball lightning with a bunch of convoluted changes?

For example: the reason I imagined it as noisy was so you couldn't just go "oh look Boris is sleeping over there, I'll hide right out of his LoS and spam it until it evokes."

Maybe you have nearby stairs that'll make that a reasonable choice still, but maybe the terrain doesn't favor that, and you get to decide "do I lure Boris over by the stairs so I can guarantee having lots of turns of this item being active or do I try to evoke it far from him and have fewer turns or do I try it nearby and risk waking him (and maybe other monsters) and having no effect?"

Maybe luring is safe/strong enough that this is a stupid feature, but that's what I was thinking of.

Similarly, the "let's store damage and deal it a short time later" thing also, y'know, had a reason behind it. Maybe it's fundamentally useless, but I don't see why -- with different numbers it could be impossibly useless (deals 100x damage to only you) or overpowered (deals 100x damage to everything in LoS except you).

One thing that I realize doesn't make much sense in this design is the prohibition on self-damage -- if it's only blocking partial damage, go ahead and LCS yourself.

[MDvedh]

I thought of evocable (or spell): Overdrive - buff, when activated redirects (or clone) some of ranged (or melee too) damage too nearby enemies in explosive-style (bigger the damage, bigger the AoE), but it is similar to Yred's pain mirror.

[Sandman25]

There could be an evocable somewhat similar to temporal damage from ToME4 - when activated it moves part of damage into future so player gets 50% of damage while the effect is active but then the postponed damage applies gradually when the effect is over. Example: effect lasts 5 turns, character should get 10, 0, 50, 60, 0 damage but gets 5, 0, 25, 30, 0, 5, 0, 25, 30, 0.

[archaeo]

As long as we're suggesting evocations that will never be in the game, I accidentally wrote this variation on njvack's idea.

With an evocations-based chance for success on the order of ring of tele, the jar of whatever will redirect some percentage of magical damage into itself, placing a status on the player in gray. As magical damage accumulates, it grows more unstable, indicated by status color (gray-yellow-red as usual, one imagines); the more damage, the faster it counts down to an explosive release of energy (indicated by messages, "the jar quakes in your hand!" "the jar feels close to bursting!", etc.). The magic jar redirects conjurations at the expense of causing you to be more vulnerable to hostile enchantments, indicated by MR-.

You can release the energy in the jar, creating an energy explosion centered on you that damages enemies and affects you as a scroll of vulnerability; at the highest level of energy (right before it bursts), the explosion is antimagic branded. If you fail to release the energy in time, it causes a contamination explosion, putting you at yellow-or-higher contam and doing even more damage to enemies, maybe even blinding them (and/or you!). Higher levels of instability in the jar create more powerful explosions, but after a use, it has to recharge (no free vuln after a contam explosion). The size of the explosion and the amount of contam depend on the amount of energy in the jar, but if you try to fill the jar with your own magic, the jar immediately explodes with contaminating energy.

This is a fiddly, silly idea, but I already typed it all out. I tend to agree with what crate said in the other thread; this game is already chock full of items, and a new one really needs to justify itself. I'm not sure any of these ideas, including mine (what character would even use this), are really making a strong case for themselves.